FOMO is why enterprises pay for GPUs they don't use — and why prices keep climbing

Enterprises can't fix their GPU waste problem because the fix makes the problem worse. Releasing idle capacity would improve utilization, but the same shortage driving GPU prices up is exactly why no team will give capacity back. So the fleet sits at roughly 5%, billed by the hour, and the cycle tightens.That pressure — repeated across thousands of enterprises over the past two years — is the reason most companies are now running their GPU fleets at roughly 5% utilization, according to Cast AI's 2026 State of Kubernetes Optimization Report, which measured actual production clusters rather than surveying them. It's also the reason nobody releases the idle capacity. Cast AI co-founder and President Laurent Gil has been tracking the dynamic for two years. “Many of the neoclouds are not cloud,